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Pick Pony | Sept. 30, 2024, 1:53 p.m.
Jolly Samurai won the $75,000 Kip Deville Stakes at Remington Park on Sunday, giving trainer Danny Pish his third victory in this stakes race. The 2-year-old Texas-bred gelding by First Samurai, out of the Paddy O’Prado mare Jolly Good, was a part of that natural disaster scare.
“We had to evacuate him from Ruidoso,” said owner Jake Brown of San Angelo, Texas. “So we brought him to Danny.”
Pish always brings a string of horses to Remington Park every summer/fall meet and that landed Jolly Samurai in Oklahoma City as this meet opened. The gelding immediately broke his maiden by 2-1/2 lengths under jockey Rene Diaz in his first career start at Remington and that set him up for Pish to get his third victory in the Kip Deville. He also won this race with Campfire Creed in 2022 and Huntsinger in 2020. It was the first win in the series for both Diaz and Brown.
Despite getting Jolly Samurai late in his 2-year-old year, Pish knew right off the bat that he had a good one on his hands.
“Jake tipped me off when he sent him my way,” Pish, who resides in Cibolo, Texas said of getting Jolly Samurai in his barn. “He said he was the best horse that came out of that and avoided the tragedy.”
New Mexico officials reported six horses that didn’t make it out of the track and 30 that lost their lives near the region.
“The fact that he is a Texas-bred meant I got to keep him,” said Pish, who trains a lot of Texas-breds and runs consistently every year on the Texas racing circuit. “It was just all these circumstances that brought him to me. I had nothing to do with his success.”
Jolly Samurai’s success has been two wins in two starts and already a stakes victory under his belt. He earned $45,000 for the Kip Deville win and now has banked $65,196 and the future is looking bright. He covered the six furlongs in 1:11.65 on the fast track and came from dead last to win by a neck at 5-2 odds. The even-money favorite, Three Echoes, checked in third, 1-3/4 lengths back of runner-up Ring Seeker (5-1). The rest of the order of finish was Bergheim (9-1) fourth, Hot Gunner (18-1) fifth, Tzedakah (46-1) sixth, Moneyline (42-1) seventh and Essay (5-1) eighth.
Jolly Samurai paid $7.80 to win, $5 to place and $2.60 to show across the board.
Diaz said he was happy for the horse and glad he could get him home a winner for the connections.
“There was no doubt in my mind we were going to catch those horses (down the stretch),” Diaz said. “I just let the horse get into stride and then we went and caught them.”
The Kip Deville is named after the all-time leading money earning Oklahoma-bred in racing history. The race is named after the Oklahoma-bred who broke his maiden status at Remington Park in 2005, eventually winning the Breeders’ Cup Mile in 2007 and becoming the all-time richest state-bred horse with $3,333,197. The Kip Deville Stakes is the first major 2-year-old stakes event of the Remington Park season.